Friday, July 31, 2009

No matter how frustrating waiting to get to the end of a book and learning what happens is, such as what I felt when I checked my mailbox at 6AM on July 27, 2007 and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows was there and I ran home and cloistered myself in my room all day, but I digress and don't choose to make that a complete sentence. No matter how frustrating having to read to the end is, it in no way amounts to the frustration of having to write it. In some ways I think that not knowing where your story winds up is a blessing, it means you can concentrate on what you know and just go from there. My problem is I'm so enraptured by the end that concentrating on the beginning is torturous. Unfortunately, I can't write anything about the end well without having a beginning. Sure, I have lots of words, but they're all pretty meaningless without, well, a plot to go on. And since it's not one book, I've decided, for the moment, that it's a series of six, they have to be written in order, for the most part. But I know! I know what happens and it's so exciting! I want to get there. The entire project is like Chelsey's Adventures in Wonderland. I live and breathe in another world entirely at least half the time, every day. Putting that world into words is one of the hardest things I've ever attempted. Whether it ever sees the light of day is an entirely different issue, I just have to get this story out of my soul. It's been burning there for a long time, and it took me a long time sitting around imagining to feel it was complete enough to start writing at all, but all of a sudden it was there, a complete story. Now I just have to fill in the details, which should be fun, I enjoy it, but it's HARD. I see the story like a movie, but none of the scenes come in order. And details can be elusive. Making them rich and vibrant without blundering around for descriptive words isn't given enough credit as a skill. Thesaurus.com will be my best friend in the editing phase, whenever it comes, because I try not to worry about anything but the story at this point. Anyway, now I'm done writing about writing and will get on to the real thing, hopefully. These people need to stop living in my head when I'm offering an unlimited number of blank pages.

Saturday, July 18, 2009

I had SO MUCH FUN. I got to meet people, and everyone was so nice. I wasn't expecting to walk, but it was great. We hiked 1.5 miles to the reservoir, and it was beautiful the whole way. The wet weather has brought a plethora of wildflowers into bloom, and I'm going to go back up tomorrow or Friday and pick a bunch to press for art projects. And the reservoir was great, I can't wait to go back with David and a couple of fishing poles. It's even big enough for a boat, though the wind was so strong when we were there that I couldn't imagine going out in anything without an anchor. We stopped at a bunch of great views and everyone took a lot of pictures. None of these were taken by me, I only have a small, kinda crappy camera and my phone, so I didn't even bother when I knew other people would be taking much better pictures with their much better cameras. We stopped in a meadow for lunch, and almost everything was put in a communal pot. Someone brought smoked salmon (that he made), cheese, and crackers and passed the platter around. Mmmmm.....yum. The conversation was great and the mood light-hearted. Everyone was having fun. I had two other people in the Jeep with me. On our way to Woodland Park for margaritas we stopped and gawked as a herd of 55 elk, to my count, ran across the road in front of us. It was so cool. Some of the pictures are incredibly high def and close too. We stopped and got margaritas, I was the only one who got strawberry or sugar. Then we went back, dropped riders off at their cars and went home. I had a little bit of a sunburn, but it was totally worth it. What a great day.

Thursday, July 16, 2009

Karen and I had a great time today. We drove to the Florissant Fossil Beds and hiked around for the better part of 6 hours. In all, we covered a little over 5.5 miles. She's a photographer and has a great camera, and she got some great shots, which I'll add to this post when I get them. We made friends with two of the park rangers, and they gave us their email addresses to exchange pictures and told us to call the next time we came out and they would walk with us. That should be fun.

We munched on apples, dates, nuts, and hummus with bread. It was yummy. And I used my camelbak for the first time in years, which worked out great. We have a date to go bowling this weekend, that should be a fun time too. Yay for friends. The Dragon Boat Festival is this weekend, that should be fun, especially considering we missed the Irish Festival last weekend to go camping.

I'm going to try to upload pictures off the phones and camera tonight.

With luck Karen will let me know where we'll meeting before we're supposed to meet and our trip to the Florissant Fossil Beds will go off as planned. In preparation for that, I need to pack a lunch and a camelbak. We'll be gone for about 4 hours, and then I need to run by a fabric store before coming home and attacking my everlasting list of chores. Somewhere in there I need a nap.

The vegetarian conversion is still going well. We have one tube of ground turkey and a lot of tuna to finish off still, and David will take care of the hot dogs and lunch meat without my help. Red meat has been entirely cut out and poultry will be next, within the next day or so I imagine. It will probably take a little while to go through the amount of tuna I have, both pouches and cans, but they should be gone by the end of July. That puts my lacto-ovo goal well on track. The best alternative to not eliminating animal products completely, in my opinion, is to by grass fed milk and cage free eggs, locally if possible. I need to come up with a budget. We just got paid, and we don't really have a good system for monitoring our spending, which we really need. I haven't totalled up how much we've spent on groceries for the month in a long time, and I'm fairly certain it's higher than we would like. Taking the time to shop around is important too. Avocados were .88 at Wal-Mart and $1.99 at King Soopers. The Wal-Mart avocados were smaller, but I almost always have produce left over when I'm done cooking, and not having leftovers isn't necessarily bad. I also need to come up with a freezer menu.

And run the washer again because I forgot about those clothes for the past day and I bet they smell now.

And somewhere in there work on my book and get some knitting/sewing done.

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

I applied to three jobs yesterday, had an interview, have one today, have another tomorrow, and need to write up my resume so I can apply to more. Could be promising, I'm hopeful. All I want to do is write, which requires a degree if I plan on doing anything other than writing books, which at this point I don't, and I also don't have the money to go back to school anyway. Hence the job search. I'd like to make some money and am feeling rather confident about my health for the moment. So wish me luck!

I will make a forenote (is that a word) that this is a really, really long blog. However, it contains the last of my public opinions on what happened with Katie and my side of the situation, since I haven't had the opportunity to share it with most people. That was a personal choice, I didn't want to gossip, but apparently that did me a disservice instead of showing that I was above bringing mutual family into a nasty situation. So here it is. If you want to read what happened, and my opinion, and about what I really said in that infamous blog, you can read it here. This is an attempt to keep the words people are putting into my mouth at a minimum. I wasn't always perfect, far from it. But I did the best I could in a tough situation, an extremely tough situation. Katie joyfully put me between a rock and a hard place and did absolutely nothing to diffuse the situation. She was deliberately unwilling to work with me to get the situation resolved, and despite her lies, I did try. I tried really hard. But she wanted a war, so she got one. So. Not everyone needs to read this blog, not everyone wants to, so I will repeat my main disclaimer here, at the top, so there is no need to read to the bottom if you don't wish to.

It ends here. If you choose to read this blog, keep that in mind. This is the last personal opinion on the situation you'll get here. If there are any unresolved issues floating around in anyone's head, ask me here, shoot me an email, or call me. Now there is no excuse that I can't be approached about the situation, because I'm issuing an open invitation. Clear the air.

On to the actual, original blog.

So it turns out that it's getting increasingly harder to come up with original urls for blogger blogs. So I'm collecting good names. Ha. I'm a nerd. Or I just like writing. I like this one, I think. 100minus1 is about something else entirely, though I have no idea how it pertains to a blog. This one is meant to be a record that can be public, in the hopes that eventually I might have friends who want to read my blogs, but also as an attempt to sanitize my life.

For my part, I would ask that anyone who does read it leave comments to show that they've been here, so I don't get hit by surprise if people find yet more opportunities to misinterpret what I say. At least that allows me the opportunity to address, digress, and communicate more clearly, and I appreciate it. While this blog is not meant to become another spot for ranting, what bothered me most about having a public blog was that people would care enough to read it and talk to others about how they interpreted it without saying anything to me so I could re-express myself. (That sentence was terribly long, and if it were more important I'd fix it, but it's not). If my intentions are misinterpreted that makes me guilty of ill-expression, not of the intent you read into my words. Consider it a caveat and a covenant: I'll make every attempt to be unoffensive and the reader will make every attempt to not find offense.

That was a bit of a rant, I can't help that, it just happens sometimes. But when Entropic Explosion was public it was extremely hurtful to discover that people were gossiping about what I wrote without giving me an opportunity to defend myself. Katie made bad choices. I was pissed, I still get pissed sometimes. I will spare you rants about it because I realize now that it's impossible to convey in words what kind of person she is. She's a good liar, and I'd rather keep it to myself then risk being construed as the bad guy again. I will leave it at she's being given way too much credit for being a good, reasonable person, no matter how little you give her. I dealt with her prods and goading for months after Christmas and had to deal with being illegally harassed by the police. When I ranted and raved, it was because something had happened that set off a flood of hurt feelings and anger and they had to be expressed so I didn't explode, whether it was a scathing comment she left on myspace or a bitchy text message commanding me to do something. I may not have reacted well, but as I said, you'll never have any idea what she put me through because it's just not worth telling you about it. And her family won't really be able to hear it anyway. That's not meant as a jab, not really. But she's family, and the baby, and having a baby, and it's a pattern. It's not worth trying to break, they love her. They just aren't capable of seeing her in her entirity. We all fall victim to that. And I'm biased the other way, because no amount of good she has could make up for what I've seen come out of her when she's setting new lows. There is no real opportunity for reconciliation of the minds there, so much better if no one tries to convince anyone, which will just lead to discord.

I do not have a copy of the blog I wrote that caused so many problems, I deleted it days later because I decided it had been written in anger and didn't convey what I wanted it to. Unfortunately, by then it was already being read, passed around, and judged. I will address this once and only once. I never said I was going to shoot anyone. I never threatened anyone. I specifically said that I did not feel safe around Katie and could no longer trust the family to respect our wishes when we said that we didn't want to see her. Because I can't trust that I will show up for a family event only to be surprised with Katie's presence (because it was deliberately kept a secret from me), I have to take measures to protect myself and feel secure. The reason that I mentioned bringing a loaded weapon with me to family gatherings was to emphasize the seriousness of the transgression that happened at Christmas and dissuade anyone from taking similar action in the future. It wasn't a threat, it was a warning. If you put me in a situation where I feel threatened, such as what happened at Christmas, I will take whatever measures needed to ensure that I feel safe. If you don't want me bringing a weapon, you better damn well make sure that Katie isn't there. If it's that important that she be there, you should realize that I won't be, and if you don't give me the choice (again, Christmas), I'll take whatever steps I feel necessary to counter the steps that you felt were necessary. THAT was what the blog said. Any interpretation otherwise is a misinterpretation. I realize it was extreme, I realize it was an overreaction, however nothing I wrote compares with the overreaction of the people who read it. It was meant to be a trade off. If you want Katie and I at the same family gathering, you should be aware I will bring a weapon to protect myself because THAT IS MY LEVEL OF DISTRUST OF HER. She brought that on herself through her actions and level of harassment the preceding months. You can call that an overreaction too, but you weren't there. You don't know, so your opinion on the matter is worthless. Keep it to yourself, as the only story anyone had heard, especially by that point, was Katie's. Which means the only opinions you could hold on the matter were a reflection of Katie's, and considering that she's a lying, worthless, waste of space, you could have given me a little more credit instead of automatically taking her side. I will note that NO ONE called me and asked about the situation, and I regarded calling people and bringing it up gossiping. So I didn't do it. Turns out she doesn't have the same standards that I do.

Fact of the matter is, no one will ever know how much pain I was in those months. I was alone, and hurting so much that the one trip I made out of the bedroom a day was to let the dogs out. Otherwise, I would cry as I crawled to the bathroom to puke for the better part of the day, then cry as I crawled back to bed, where I would stay, motionless, watching the same movie over and over and over, because it was not worth the pain to get up and change the DVD. On top of this, I have to deal with Katie dropping by whenever she felt like it. I put a stop to that, I changed the locks. It was not out of a desire to escalate the situation, it was a necessary measure of self-preservation. I was physically unable to deal with the situation the majority of the time, and seeing as I knew she had no respect for me or my wishes at that point, despite never contributing a dime of her own money to the household expenses (she used and abused Mom's credit card, trust me, I watched her buy cartons of cigarettes on it), I could not allow her free access to the house. I followed this action by telling her that when she wanted to get her things, all I wanted was a days notice. A phone call. So that I could gather up her things that had been borrowed, or moved, or just generally spread out that I knew where were and have them ready for her. She refused to call me. That's not my fault. She refused to set up a time, and on the occasions when we did, she didn't show. Again, with me being almost completely physically disabled by this point. I'm not exaggerating.

When she finally did come to collect her things, I had no notice. On top of that, I had asked her to have her things out two weeks before I was moving so that nothing of hers would accidentally get moved to my apartment. Well, she didn't come before I had to start moving, so unfortunately, that's what happened. I had a lot of help packing, because I needed it, and I wasn't able to supervise the majority of the packing. Some of her things were moved. That was her fault too, she left it too late, and I had tried to prevent the situation from happening, and she rejected my wisdom out of spite. Those were the consequences. So then she accused me of stealing all sorts of things, the majority of which I didn't have. After that it was hard to take her seriously when she told me I had things of hers, because I knew they were false accusations. I knew I didn't have certain items she insisted I had. And when you're continually harassing someone you don't give them much incentive to help you out. Then I had to clean the house by myself, including the basement that she had left completely trashed. She didn't even remove all of her furniture, leaving it to me, the person in extreme pain, to push a mattress and a box spring up a flight of stairs to the porch by myself. If she doesn't have to care about my pain, I don't have to care about what she wants either. After that there was a continual stream of demanding text messages and nasty public messages about David on myspace. The number one thing I told her from the beginning was that I was not going to communicate about a matter of this seriousness through text messages. She still refused to call, continuing to send text messages. She called the landlord and the police about her possessions. She NEVER called me. NEVER. So was her priority her possessions or harassment? Did she want the situation resolved easily or did she want it as messy as possible? You can come to your own conclusions, but I offered her an easy, uncomplicated way out: a phone call. She can't say I wouldn't have answered or arranged a time with her because she never tried. She never wanted to be a peacemaker. In fact, she went out of her way to cause trouble and make things as difficult as possible for me.

So. Now that I've covered why I needed a new blog and addressed why I face trepidation over the decision to have another public blog, we can move on. I've covered my side of the controversy caused by Entropic Explosion, and am dropping the matter. It ends here. If you choose to read this blog, keep that in mind. This is the last personal opinion on the situation you'll get here. If there are any unresolved issues floating around in anyone's head, ask me here, shoot me an email, or call me. Now there is no excuse that I can't be approached about the situation, because I'm issuing an open invitation. Clear the air.

Saturday, July 11, 2009

This was our very first camping trip. We rented a camper and stayed at the Lone Duck Campground, which was great. We had really nice neighbors, and everyone there was super friendly. We brought the dogs, and they did great. We went to the Florissant Fossil Beds on Saturday, which was really cool. We were only able to hike a couple of the trails, but I'll definitely go back to do the rest. For everyone back home who is curious, the fossil beds were named after Florissant, MO, because the man who discovered them was from Missouri. Pretty cool. Basically millions of years ago there was a huge lake in the area, as well as a volcano. When the volcano erupted, the flow of mud, magma, whatever it was covered the bottom 15 feets of the huge Redwood trees in the area. Everything above the flow eventually died and went away, but the bottom of the trees petrified. The ash settled on the bottom of the lake and helped preserve the plants and animals that had died and settled to the bottom, leaving a lot of fossils in the area. It was really neat. We didn't stay long because they were closing soon and we were both hungry, but I'll go back.